Back to the real debate on the NHS and health care. Labours made

Comment on Why I’ll Never Vote Conservative at a General Election by David.

Back to the real debate on the NHS and health care.

Labours made changes to the waiting lists recently which would mean if your personal experiences are real (not saying you’ve made them up, but you can’t be sure) the hospital would be in trouble and I believe your Grandfather could have gone for private treatment and the hospital would have had to pay for it.

It’s better now and what you describe was far worse under the Conservatives and had the Tories remained in power for the last 13 years do you really think we’d have a better NHS? Knowing what the Tories are like they’d have probably privatised the NHS by now and we’d me moving towards the awful USA medical health care system!!!

I’m sorry to hear your Grandfather fell out of bed in hospital, I hope he was OK and recovered from his heart operation?

These things happen, it’s an enormous institution and things will go wrong.

That being said what do you expect on a ward late at night, how often do you think the nurses should do ward checks?

I was in hospital (Lincoln hospital) February 2009 for a major operation on my back: had a 4 hour operation to fuse two degraded discs in my back (been suffering back pain for over a decade).

I spent six days on the ward in quite a bit of pain: 200 mgs of morphine a day took the edge off the pain (been on opiates for over a decade, so built up a tolerance) from the operation and literally couldn’t move more than a couple of inches for 3 days (was completely dependant on the nurses and their assistants) until the doctors got my pain meds right (took about 2 days to really listen to me and a day to get the dose about right).

My treatment wasn’t perfect, but it was better than I expected as I remember the horror stories from when the Conservatives were in power and though Labour said things had improved I was reluctant to believe them (politicians lie).

Biggest issue I had was convincing the nurses and doctors I needed more morphine and injecting and drinking morphine (that stuff tastes disgusting and something you don’t want on an empty stomach in the middle of the night!) when I thought I needed it to give a short-term decrease in pain wasn’t the answer: I started by not asking for morphine until I REALLY needed it, which in hindsight was a BIG mistake.

After realising I still needed a lot of pain meds I had to request morphine every 2 hours (couldn’t get a decent nights sleep) and I was taking so much that way it made me feel sick, side effect of high doses of morphine is nausea.

There approach was my pain would be temporary and the operation would have taken all the back pain away and so only post operative pain should be left: it’s a year on and they were wrong to make that assumption, still have back pain, though a bit better.

When they eventually listened and put me on time released morphine (what I’d been on for 10+ years, but higher dose for post operative pain) I could to some degree manage the pain, was still in agony, but at a level I could cope with as long as I didn’t move too much over the first week or two.

I’m not surprised this went wrong, someone asks for more morphine they must be a drug seeker. Truth was I was asking for less morphine overall, but time released so it worked over a 24 hour period rather than a theoretical short term significant drop in pain that wasn’t long enough to do anything with it and only worked if I took the maximum morphine they could give me in injection and liquid form!!

The above would work fine for short term pain, but my pain was chronic with acute post op pain thrown in on top.

Still on morphine now (over a year later, much lower dose mind you), operation might not have worked (better, but still in pain). Dropped my dose 5 mgs yesterday and feel like crap today, so if I snap at anyone could be that :-)

Despite the doctors taking their sweet time to believe me about needing time released morphine I’m happy with the overall treatment (even if they had listened I’d have still been in pain). Everything was on time (operation wise: I had to delay my operation due to illness and it was only put back 4 weeks), they were constantly cleaning the ward with disinfectant and alcohol wipes and most of the staff were helpful, though very busy and at times less than sympathetic (like I say not perfect).

I will give some advice to old people going in hospital, don’t wait for nurses to walk by to ask for help, if they are walking by it’s because they are probably going somewhere to help someone who has called them via their buzzer. If you need help, even a simple little thing, BUZZ. I’m not that old, but like most of the elderly people in the ward I was on I didn’t want to bother a nurse for a small thing and would wait for one to pass (big things I’d buzz for). Took me a few days to realise no matter how small the problem push the buzzer as the nurses and assistants are there to help and buzzing is how they know you need help and how they share their time between patients. The elderly people on the ward (especially the men) would wait for nurses to pass even for important things.

In contrast a nurse complained the women on the war would buzz for anything, during the day all you heard from the women’s side of the ward was buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz…. Maybe a nurse reading this could confirm this is the norm (I was after all on one ward and only one nurse said the above)?

I was surprised the food was quite good and I’m very fussy about food, their chocolate pudding was a joke, awful stuff, wouldn’t feed it a dog!

During nights on the ward I’d be awake quite a bit due to pain over the first few nights and the nurses were regularly back and forth to patients. I estimate they’d do a full ward check every 2-3 hours. I realise each hospital is different, but it’s not a big surprise a patient could fall out of bed and be left on the floor a couple of hours.

Would that really be any different if your Grandfather was sleeping under your roof, I assume you don’t wake on the hour to check your family members aren’t in any trouble?

It’s unfortunate it happened, but to blame the NHS is wrong on that point.

The NHS has improved so much under Labour, it’s not the same beast that was underfunded and falling to pieces under the Tories.

David